This invention pertains to a data server system and a computer apparatus preferred for exchanging data between, for example, a hand-held computer terminal and a personal computer.
In recent years, hand-held computer terminals (hereinafter, to be abbreviated as “hand-held terminals”) are coming into wide use. These hand-held terminals are represented, for example, by WorkPad (a registered trade mark of IBM Corporation) and Palm Computing (a registered trade mark of 3COM Corporation, USA), etc. A hand-held terminal can be used for schedule and address management, as well as sending/receiving e-mails and browsing homes pages on the Internet via a portable telephone, etc.
Data used by such a hand-held terminal is often held in a users desk-top or lap-top personal computer as well. The user, therefore, is requested to synchronize the data between the hand-held terminal and the personal computer through communications via a cable or via an infrared beam and/or radio waves at proper intervals.
On the other hand, the hand-held terminal is confronted with a problem; it does not have the newest data. For example, when the user uses the hand-held terminal away from home (office) so as to browse data, the data is often the data synchronized before leaving home with the data in the main personal computer; the data is not the data browsed at that time. More concretely, when the user tries to browse an e-mail on the hand-held terminal after it is received by the main personal computer and transferred to the hand-held terminal, the user cannot browse the e-mail on the hand-held terminal in the case where the e-mail is received by the main personal computer later than that data synchronization. In the case where data is updated in the main personal computer after that data synchronization between the hand-held terminal and the main personal computer, the updated data cannot be accessed at the hand-held terminal unless the data synchronization is made again.
In order to solve such a problem while a lap-top personal computer is used as the main personal computer, the lap-top personal computer must be kept active, thereby data synchronization is done as needed at a proper timing between the hand-held terminal and the lap-top PC respectively.
During such data synchronization while the user is moving, a movable part in the lap-top PC, especially the hard disk drive (hereinafter, to be abbreviated as the HDD) that stores data, might be affected adversely. In the HDD, data is read/written from/to a predetermined track by the head provided at the tip of the locking arm. The arm moves in the radial direction of the magnetic disk so as to access the data while the disk rotates. Consequently, when various vibrations are experienced by HDD while the hand-held terminal is mobile, the positional accuracy of the arm for moving the head on the magnetic disk is degraded, resulting in data read/write errors, data crash, and breakdown of the HDD itself.
Under such circumstances, it is a purpose of the present invention to provide a data server system, a computer apparatus, etc. that can process data in response to an external access even during mobile use of the terminal.